Exclusive: The Swell Season Feeling Lucky with Strict Joy
10/16/2009 By Jessica Lewis
For Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová of the Oscar-winning duo the Swell Season, things just seem to be “written in the stars,” whether it’s the elements that went in to putting together their upcoming new album, Strict Joy, or just knowing one another.
Even though the record’s main themes seem to be about the romantic break-up between the pair, who had the surprise breakout hit with Once, they’re still strong enough to make another record. So it’s the technical background we can get interested in now.
Hansard and Irglová took just under a month recording the album in Connecticut with the Frames and acclaimed producer Peter Kadis in his home studio. Hansard and Irglová went to the studio because they were enamoured with Kadis’s past work with the National’s album Boxer, and ended up recording a handful of songs in a whirlwind.
“We just play songs out, to figure them out, to feel out what they’re doing, what they’re saying,” said Hansard in a recent interview with Exclaim! “And when you get enough of them, you go and put them down, and really, going into making a record sometimes, you’re not even set out to make an album. You’re just setting out to put stuff down. That’s what happened with this. It was a very easy record to make, we’re very happy with it.”
Irglová agrees. “It was written in the stars,” she said. “I think life is full of those magical moments, if you just allow them to happen. If you live your life deciding you’re going to go with the flow and trust life, then you do find yourself in places you never imagined yourself being and for me that’s what it’s all about.”
Hansard goes on to say that the luck isn’t just in the stars, but also in the unassuming business model, saying, “It was more just the main concern of any band is to put out decent work and to continue doing gigs where you can communicate your songs clearly and correctly. And hopefully, if you’re doing your job right, to be able to play the same room every time you come back to town or play a bigger one. Some bands might say, ‘Okay, here’s the end game, and here is what we need to do to get there.’ We pretty much made a record and said, ‘Right now we have a record. What do we do with it?’ So it is a slightly different way of looking at it. It definitely works for us so far.”
The duo commissioned Hansard’s fellow Frames members to be the support on the album after a tour, as well as included a few guests. What they ended up with was a full sound complete with just that: more voices, more sound and more ambitions.
Originally due out September 29, Strict Joy’s release date was pushed back a month due to artwork conflicts. It will now be released on October 27 through Anti-.
The Swell Season will be wooing Canada on these dates:
11/3 Toronto, ON – Massey Hall
11/4 Montreal, QC -; Olympia de Montreal
11/25 Vancouver, BC – The Center
Sidenote: You can now stream Strict Joy in full over at NPR.
Unfortunately, Vancouver doesn’t present itself as the best healthy antidote to Good’s previous record, Hospital Music. It pushes hard towards anthemic arena (or radio, at least) rock but every song follows the same direction of instruments and feelings. It’s almost as if Good has put up a hard front after the vulnerability he established on Hospital Music but now it’s one of those days where it’s not convincing. Good has turned to the west coast for this record, remarking on places of personal meaning. There’s more relationship drama, emotional distress, tries at becoming stronger, etc. However, in terms of quality, the best songs aren’t until the latter half of the album, where Good’s trademark warble is in its own league and the fast guitars have reached a good forward momentum. “A Silent Army in the Trees” has a catchy chorus of chord progressions, “Fought to Fight It” and “VNA” are tales of building up strength and independence, and closer “Empty’s Theme Park” ends the album with a faint thought that there could have been a lot more slow beauty put into it. (Universal)
So if you’re not a fan of The Line of Best Fit’s Oh Canada compilations yet, well, get on that. Ro Cemm has done it again with a brilliant playlist featuring Two Hours Traffic, Ohbijou, Evening Hymns, Fox Jaws, Carbon Dating Service, Jenn Grant, Young Galaxy and more.
Two awesome Canadian bands have recently been featured on the Daytrotter sessions – a website that features a band every day with hit tracks and occasionally some that you can’t find anywhere else. You can download or just listen to these tracks, along with reading a nice intro by creator Sean Moeller.
Yesterday, Junior Boys were featured as a brilliant and energizing start to September. It makes it quite easy to at least ward off the autumn blues a little bit longer. Moeller writes, “They grab us softly by the wrists and glide us out onto the floor as if we were on rollers and caught up in some kind of tailwind that was gently affecting our stance to remain stationary and just get a respectable buzz on, moving us slowly out into the night of abandonment, into an evening that won’t likely get us into any form of trouble that couldn’t be corrected or blotched out.”
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
You can read more and download tracks “Bits and Pieces,” “Birthday” and “The Animator” here.
Today, Moeller is repping the much-talked-about band-around-town[Toronto] these days, Rural Alberta Advantage. They coax the leaves to fall early, but in a way that will bring a sweet release, as front man Nils Edenloff sings “the air is unbearably hot for the night” on “The Air,” the first track available for download/listen. Moeller says, “He writes songs about the dead, for the living, as if to slap them broadly across the unsuspecting cheeks to remind them that they’re still able to wake up in the mornings and that alone is a very fine thing, an advantage that allows for feeling the blood go through you, for feeling the pain course (not always so horrible) and for feeling any kind of feeling you’d please or wouldn’t please.” Sounds incredibly right for a changing of the seasons, doesn’t it?
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
You can read more and download tracks “The Air,” “Two Lovers” (unreleased), “In the Summertime” and “Barnesyard” (unreleased).
Read after the jump and you’ll find other popular Canadian Daytrotter sessions:
Resident awesome PEI band, Two Hours Traffic, are releasing their long-awaited sophomore album, Territory, next week on September 8th, but hey – we can still listen to it for free until then!
This month’s Exclaim cover band are not only all over that publication but everywhere else in Canada these days it seems. Well worth it. They deserve this success, and I’m sure the album will do really well when it comes out, even when we can listen to it online.
Here’s the new video for one of the new songs, “Happiness Burns.” The band look a lot more sophisticated, and there’s an intro from front man Liam, who appears to be talking out to a group of kids that we don’t know…
Two Hours Traffic will play with The Danks and Spiral Beach in Toronto at Lee’s Palace on October 16.
A new team of the National Posts’ The Ampersand and Dose.ca brings us a 22-track long playlist of great international musicians – including Canadians: Thunderheist, Hey Ocean!, Crystal Castles, The Cliks, Metric, Patrick Watson, etc.
You can find the free code on Dose – the free playlist is courtesy of iTunes.
You must be in Canada (or be signed up in the Canadian store) in iTunes. I learned this the hard way. I am still in the U.S. store (as, I hate to say it, the best promos are there) so I’m feeling the loss of this playlist! Thankfully I do own music from a good amount of the artists, so I’ll have to make up my own version.
Here is the setlist:
“Too Fake” by Hockey
“Gone Too Far” by Dragonette
“Quicksand (Demo Version)” by La Roux
“A Song About California” by Hey Ocean!
“Gimme Sympathy” by Metric
“Furr” by Blitzen Trapper
“She Don’t Wanna Man” by Asher Roth & Keri Hilson
“Dreams-Come-True-Girl (feat. Karen Black)” by Cass McCombs
“Rabbit Heart (Raise It Up)” by Florence & The Machine
“Now We Can See” by The Thermals
“Stillness Is the Move” by Dirty Projectors
“Alcoholics Unanimous” by Art Brut vs. Satan
“Nothing2Step2″ by Thunderheist
“Animal” by Miike Snow
“Courtship Dating” by Crystal Castles
“Miracle (Radio Edit)” by Sally Shapiro
“Beijing” by Patrick Watson
“Get Crazy” by LMFAO
“Dirty King” by The Cliks
“Percussion Gun” by White Rabbits
“8th Wonder” by Gossip
Two great compilations have recently been released for download on the internet, and they are two that should not go unnoticed.
In the third installment, Brighton-based Ro Cemm from the Line of Best Fit has released another compilation of great Canadian music for the end of summer. It includes artists such as Dog Day, Bahamas, Amy Millan, Julie Doiron and The Paint Movement (all artists that have been mentioned on RoundLetters!). You can download it here.
A fabulous non-profit that RoundLetters happily promotes (and writes about in the latest issue of Broken Pencil) is Montreal/London’s the Yellow Bird Project. Recently they released their project with illustrator Andy J. Miller, the Indie Rock Colouring Book. This compilation is to commemorate the release. Blogger the Middle Distance Runner makes tons of mix tapes for Baeble Music, titled T.G.I. Mixtape, but this time the talents are turned towards YBP. Now, it appears you cannot fully download this compilation, but it is for full listen here. Artists include Stars, Broken Social Scene, Of Montreal, Au Revoir Simone, K-Os feat Murray Lightburn and Elvis Perkins.
This is one of those great moments – when an artist lets their entire album be streamed before it actually comes out. I believe that’s great, anyway. Especially in the case of Imogen Heap, who will release Ellipse come August 25.
And another good thing – you can stream it while on RoundLetters with her handy portable player.
There is a new side project super group in the midst, coming from the ever-evolving Montreal music scene.
Out of Arcade Fire, Young Galaxy, Stars, Zeroes, Parkside Jones, Marathon and more comes this pop rock band called Silver Starling.
Their self-titled debut, which was mixed by Peter Katis (who has worked with The National and Interpol) and Marcus Paquin will be released in the fall by Last Gang Records.
Four tracks are available on their MySpace. “Something Over Nothing” is a slow, dreamy sad ballad. “Caught in Your Glow” is another ballad, but much more upbeat, with a great string arrangement, building the song up in tempo. “Ghosts” is clearly the stand out track in terms of catchy, with cute banjo plucking and xylophones with frontman Pacquin’s whisper. “Closer” is also quite catchy and has a great bass line.
I don’t want to spend much time comparing them to Arcade Fire, but it’s undeniable Pacquin has a tiny bit of Butler’s vocals in him. However, he takes it in a more casual and fun direction. Other than that, Silver Starling are progressive and charming, and I’m excited to hear more from them in the future.
If you go to their MySpace, you can catch an acoustic video performance of “Ghosts” which really showcases their harmonies, coordination and ability to sing in the wind.
The band has tour dates lined up in Oro-Medonte, Montreal and Ottawa at the moment for Aug 30 – Sept 24.
If you’ve been following this blog since before its WordPress inception, you’ll know that I’m quite the fan of The Swell Season (by entries like this one and this one).
So it’s safe to say that I’m giddy over the recent performance of GlenHansard and MarketaIrglova (even though they’re romantically broken up now… I think… sigh) on NPR’s cute Tiny Desk concert series. The pair performed six new songs and one more familiar track off of their upcoming album, Strict Joy. The album will be released September 29, but for now, enjoy the performance along with me.
The songs are played in this order:
“Maybe I Was Born To Hold You In These Arms”
“Low Rising”
“Fantasy Man”
“Paper Cup”
“Feeling The Pull”
“Back Broke”
“When Your Mind’s Made Up”
Can’t resist the cuteness, can you? Now, it’s a little awkward when Hansard explains the story behind “Low Rising” as it’s about a rough talk with “a girlfriend”, so it’s a little heartbreaking. But it sounds like and looks like they’re fine with one another, singing about love…
I remember seeing them play a few of these songs, if not all of them, when they came to Toronto last year. And I remember feeling all warm and fuzzy. I don’t need to remember though, as I feel it again, and it’s obvious the entire NPR office did too.
Tiny Desk concerts are available as audio downloads, but it’s a great thing to see visuals as well. Check out Canadian Julie Doiron’s video performance.
For any RoundLetters updates that came before May 09, go here.
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